A Gallup poll released Monday shows that 58 percent of Americans are unhappy with the current level of immigration; only 34 percent who are satisfied. According to Gallup, “This marks an eight-percentage-point increase in dissatisfaction since last year and a return to the 2019-2020 range.”
The shift toward desiring less immigration is particularly strong among registered Republicans. Gallup shows that fully 69 percent of Republicans now want immigration reduced, compared with 40 percent in early January 2021.
So, with demands for decreased immigration growing among their constituents, what are Republican politicians doing? Well, 17 of them are joining with 17 of their Democratic colleagues demanding an increase of H-2B foreign visa workers.
On the very day of the Gallup announcement, those Republican senators signed a letter to the heads of the departments of Homeland Security and Labor, urging them to “release the maximum allowable number of additional” such workers for this fiscal year. Their stated rationale was that “businesses from industries such as tourism and hospitality, landscaping, fairs and carnivals, seafood processing, golf courses, reforestation, contractors and horse racing depend on” foreign guest workers.
Guest worker programs like H-2B (seasonal non-agricultural) are rife with overstays. For example, the Dominican Republic was removed from the list of approved nations in 2019 because an estimated 30 percent of Dominican nationals illegally overstayed. A report issued last year estimated that there were a total 585,000 visa overstays in FY 2020 alone, many of them H-2Bs.
In response, RJ Hauman of FAIR said:
The White House and Congressional Democrats are hell-bent on eliminating any meaningful limits or restrictions on immigration, but Republicans still can’t unify behind doing the opposite. They’re great on the illegal front due to the border crisis, but why not also oppose programs that are rife with abuse, displace American workers, and depress wages? Ignore businesses reliant on cheap foreign labor and listen to voters — it’s that simple.
The 17 Republican signers were: Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Risch (R-ID), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Crapo (R-ID), John Thune (R-SD), Susan Collins (R-ME), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Tim Scott (R-SC).